Category Archives: ibm

No, I’m not going to talk about recent reports. Even if I knew something you didn’t (which I don’t), I probably wouldn’t feel comfortable writing it here.

But I just have to point my readers to a lovely comparison by Jeff Kesselman (spotted via Sam Ruby’s blog). Written four years ago, so no risk of being influenced by current events, yet those who are watching may find it strangely familiar! Jeff has experience of both companies, and his preference seems to show through his slightly-tongue-in-cheek piece.

Oh, maybe there is a serious comparison that deserves mention at this point. Someone remind me: when was it IBM made one of the biggest stonking losses in corporate history, before reinventing itself as primarily a services company? It feels as if Sun might be at a comparable, though less extreme, point in its life.

Microsoft’s OOXML, and in particular the way its going about trying to create a standard of it, is one of the big controversies in IT today. Lots of people have strong views on it.

The ASF doesn’t.

Some of us would prefer it if partisan commentators respected our non-combatent status[1], and didn’t try to hint at an ASF stance on the issue.

The ASF has no reason to hold an official position, for or against OOXML, nor for or against Microsoft’s standardisation efforts. We haven’t even discussed it in the members forum.

Of course, individual members will hold their own views, and it may be relevant to some ASF projects. But even in the vanishingly unlikely event of a view being unanimous across the entire membership and all the projects, that doesn’t make an ASF position.

Following up on that, I discovered that Microsoft Italy published a press release on March 18th, in which forthcoming support for OOXML in an Apache project is announced[2]. Now at least one Microsoft blogger in english has been spotted spinning “Apache will support OOXML”. Oh dear.

So within two days, that’s both sides dragging the Apache name into their dispute, albeit with a measure of plausible deniability. Wouldn’t it be good if both Microsoft’s and IBM’s official channels could issue statements disowning their respective bloggers’ use of the Apache name?

Oh, and how much here is pure coincidence? The IBM blogger starts by saying noone has claimed ASF support for OOXML yet. That’s the day after the Microsoft press release!

[1] I was going to say “neutrality”, but even that could be seen as a position.

[2] AIUI it’s really more limited: MS and SourceSense entered an agreement to do some work in that direction. Of course I have no inside information on the deal.